Objective: The Pap smear is a reliable, inexpensive and effective screening test for cervical cancer; the second most common cancer among women worldwide. We aimed to determine women’s knowledge, attitudes and practice towards Pap smear and barriers for the screening in a public hospital.
Materials and methods: This study, was carried out on 350 outpatient married women reffering for a visit at the clinics of the Alzahra educational hospital, Rasht- Iran, 2011. A questionnaire including demographic characteristics (24 questions), knowledge (14 questions), attitudes (11 statments) and practice (10 questions) towards Pap smear was completed by interview with the women. The data were analyzed using SPSS ver.13.
Results: Mean age of participants was 32 (SD 12) years. Of the respondents, only 44.3% were aware of the Pap smear and 27.1% had had it at least once in their life. The most common reason for having the test was physicians’ or other health workers’ advise and for not having the test was no recommendation by health providers and lack of knowledge about Pap smear. Embarrassing, fear of the test result or economic problems mentioned by only 12 (4.2%) as the main barrier. Mean (±SD) knowledge score of the women who had heard about the Pap smear was 59.4 (24.3) and attitudes score of all participants was 48.5 (11.6) from possible range score of 0-100. Women with a history of Pap smear had had higher awareness and attitudes score.
Conclusion: The knowledge and practice of the women was inadequate and need to be promoted. Considering the main reason mentioned by the participants for not having the test, all health providers should educate and encourage women to do regular Pap smear.